The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1887-07-18

In letter releting to the Interstate COM
merce law, printed in the Waterville Mail
last week, one of the oldest manufacturers
In Maine gives some very interesting and
valuable facts about an important Maine in
dustry. For more than thirty years John
U. Hubbard has been engaged in manufac-
turing axes, scythes and beveled tools at
Oakland. He has seen the business grow
and prosper and the goods gain an enviable
reputation all over the United States and
Canada. To-day, at Oakland, there are an
abundant and never failing water power,
ample buildings, with machines and tools
which have required years of skill and ex-
perience to perfect, skilled and interested
workmen, and managers who are practical
business men. To all these advantages is
added capital sufficient for the requirements
of the business. Yet the industry is not
prospecting. with all these apparent ad-
vantages, and with constant hard work, pru-
dence and economy, for several successive
years, we have had no return for capital in
vested, nor even adequate compensation for
actual work" 1t is very serious matter
for the State eff Maine when such an indus
try as this at Oakland, and the causes or
reasons which are assigned for it merit care
full consideration. In the first place, in the
course of industrial development in the
West and South, competitors have come into
the field who have great advantages The
manufacture of edge tools requires the con-
sumption of large quantities of coal, coke,
grindstone, iron, slate, and emery, all heavy
materials, most of which must be transport
ed from the West. Then, too, the finished
goods must, to great extent, find market
outside Of New England. In freights alone
the western manufacturer has a great ad-
vantage. The people Of the West appreciate
this fact, and already, Mr.. Hubbard says
Free sites, cheap coal and coke, natural gas,
and competition in freights are being held
out by the people of Western towns as in
ducements for Eastern manufacturers to
come among them, and already the manufac-
turers are carefully scrutinizing these appar-
ent advantages" For the competition of
more favorable sites in the West there of
course is no remedy. The advantage of the
West is a natural disadvantage. But Mr..
Hubbard gives it as his opinion that the
edge tool makers at Oakland are impeded by
an artificial disadvantage in freight rates.
Coal, iron, steel, grindst0nes, ETC., pay he
says, from two to four cents per mile freight,
while natural products of the State, such as
lumber, for instance, pay but one cent per
mile. The revision of freight rates that has
followed the enactment Of the Interstate
commerce law, seems to have made the con-
ditions of the edge tool industry worse; and
after having endeavored to reduce the cost of
putting their goods on the market, in every
way possible the Oakland manufacturers yet
find themselves beaten in the struggle by
more fayorably situated competitors. Per-
haps it is to be impossible, even with the
most favorable freight rates, for this Maine
industry to sustain itself in the face of
Western competition. If such is the case, it
is very interesting fact for the people of
Maine to know. There are a great many
other industries carried on here of which
both the raw materials and manufactured
products are necessarily transported long
distances.